Every year on March 8, I think about all the women I have sat across from in sessions. The ones who arrived holding everyone else together while quietly falling apart. One who quietly tolerated her boyfriend's sexual behaviour and felt disgusted by it every time, but couldn't explain to her parents why she wanted to break off the ongoing marriage preparations. The high-achieving woman who could not stop working long enough to sleep. One who got divorced after 24 years of marriage and was thrown out of the house with no explanation. The new mother who had not told anyone she was struggling because she did not want to seem ungrateful, who was regretting her decision to have the baby, having just turned down a promotion. The woman who had a different sexual orientation, who had fought with family for the relationship and was now facing anxiety due to the betrayal of her partner and couldn't share it with anyone. The immigrant woman carrying the invisible weight of two cultures on her back. The woman who kept saying, "I should be able to handle this." Another woman wanted to understand why her husband would wet the bed every night and how she could help him. Two women in their second marriages after a painful divorce who discovered that one husband was already married and the other was just using her for financial benefit.
Each of them was asking for justice. Not in the way we usually talk about it in courtrooms or parliaments or corporate boardrooms. They were asking for the most fundamental form of justice: the right to be treated fairly. To not have to earn their worth. To exist without constantly justifying themselves and seeking validation from others in various forms.
This year, International Women's Day 2026 carries the theme "Rights. Justice. Action. For ALL Women and Girls" with a companion campaign, "Balance the Scales," that names what we are working toward: a world where every woman and girl, regardless of background or identity, deserves to be safe, respected, and free to shape her own lives.
The work of balancing those scales happens in systems and institutions. But it also happens inside you. And that is what I want to talk about today.
The Scales Are Tipped 'Inside and Out'
Women globally hold only 64% of the legal rights that men possess (UN Women, 2026). At the current pace of progress, UN Women reports that closing legal protection gaps will take 286 years. In India, 30% of women report experiencing gender-based violence (PMC, 2024).
These are not statistics I share to overwhelm you. I share them because they matter, and because they have a psychological consequence that rarely makes the headlines.
Women who live in inequitable systems internalize that inequity. The message that your needs matter less gets absorbed through childhood, through family, through culture, through workplace dynamics, through a thousand small moments that teach you to shrink. And eventually, the most damaging inequality is not the one in the law. It is the one in how you talk to yourself.
Women experience depression at nearly twice the rate of men globally (CDC). 46% of women are burned out, compared to 37% of men, and that gap has widened from 3 percentage points in 2019 to 8 percentage points in 2023 (McKinsey/Lean In Women in the Workplace, 2024). 36.7% of women report having been diagnosed with depression at some point in their lifetime, compared to 20.4% of men (Gallup, 2023).
These are not coincidences. They are the measurable cost of inequity, both external and internal.
The Invisible Weight Women Carry
Before I talk about what balancing the scales internally looks like, I want to name what is on those scales. Because the weight is real, and it is largely invisible.
The Mental Load
A systematic review published in PMC defines the mental load as "a combination of cognitive and emotional labor characterized by three features: it is invisible in that it is enacted internally yet results in unpaid physical labor; it is boundaryless in that it can be brought to work and into leisure and sleep time; and it is enduring in that it is never complete."
Across all the literature, a "clear and consistent pattern emerges: mothers perform the bulk of the domestic mental load." The problem is not just the volume. It is the invisibility: "While it is easy to see which partner is chopping vegetables for dinner, the labor of planning a weekly rotation of meals may go unrecognized by other family members, or even by oneself."
High levels of this cognitive load are linked to emotional exhaustion, sleep disturbances, work-family conflict, and lower job performance in women but not men performing the same tasks (PMC, 2023). Childcare and housework were "negatively associated with wellbeing, psychological distress, depression, anxiety, malaise, and sleep problems for working women," but the same was not true for men.
This is not a personal failing. This is a structural reality landing on individual women's nervous systems.
The Superwoman Expectation
Many women have internalized what Dr. Cheryl Woods-Giscombé calls the Superwoman Schema: the perceived obligation to project strength, suppress emotions, resist feelings of vulnerability and dependence, and always prioritize caregiving over self-care.
Women who internalize it are at greater risk for stress-related illness, depression, and burnout. And critically, they underuse mental health services. The very act of holding yourself to superhuman standards keeps you from asking for the help that would ease the burden.
For South Asian and Indian women, this schema has a specific cultural form. Research published in PMC documents how Indian mothers have been "expected to be silent pillars: strong, nurturing, patient, and self-sacrificing." Women are "socialized to carry suffering quietly, absorb violence that never touched them directly and perform caregiving as if their own pain is irrelevant."
India's mental health treatment gap is estimated at approximately 95% (PMC). Nearly all who need care do not receive it. When your culture defines mental illness as personal failure, and when asking for help is framed as weakness, suffering in silence becomes the only option that feels safe.
The Doubt You Did Not Choose
There is also the question of the inner voice, the one that says you are not quite good enough, not quite qualified, that somehow people will find out you do not actually deserve to be where you are.
A meta-analysis of 108 studies with over 40,000 participants confirmed that women consistently score higher than men in imposter syndrome. 72% of women have experienced it in the workplace, compared to 63% of men. And most striking: the gender gap did not decrease over time, despite increased female representation in higher education and prestigious careers.
This is not biology. It is conditioning. Young women learn early to "distrust their opinions and stifle their voices," and "perfection becomes the goal and every flaw, mistake or criticism becomes internalized." The inner critic is the voice of an inequitable system speaking through your own mind.
You Were Raised to Be Tender But Not Fierce
Dr. Kristin Neff, the leading researcher on self-compassion, offers a phrase that I return to often: "Women are raised to be tender but not fierce."
What she means is that women are socialized into one half of self-compassion. They learn the tender side: care, warmth, gentleness toward others. But they are rarely taught the fierce side: protection, advocacy, the willingness to draw a line. The same nurturing instinct that makes women exceptional caregivers is turned outward, toward everyone else, while the self is left without protection.
A meta-analysis of 88 study samples showed that men reported slightly higher levels of self-compassion than women. But, crucially, sex differences were insignificant once gender role orientation was controlled for. The gap is not biological. "Female gender norms of self-sacrifice work against self-compassion, whereas male gender norms of entitlement encourage it."
In other words: you did not choose to be harsher with yourself than you are with the people you love. You were taught to be.
And the research shows what changes when women learn to apply the same compassion to themselves that they give to others. A study of 200+ women found that higher self-compassion was linked to higher feelings of empowerment, strength and competence, ability to assert themselves, comfort expressing anger, and greater commitment to social activism.
This last finding matters. When you stop tearing yourself apart, you have more energy to work toward the world you believe in.
What Inner Justice Actually Looks Like
Balancing your inner scales does not mean abandoning your values, becoming selfish, or checking out of the world. It means applying to yourself the same standard of fairness you would apply to a person you love.
Here are the places to start:
1. Name what is on your scales.
The work begins with visibility. What are you actually carrying? Not the tasks on your to-do list: the invisible load of planning, anticipating, managing, soothing, organizing that runs constantly in the background. Write it down. The invisibility of the mental load is part of what makes it crushing. Naming it makes it real, and real things can be shared, reduced, or renegotiated.
In sessions, I often use Transactional Analysis to help women identify the Critical Parent ego state, the internalized voice that echoes cultural messages about what a good woman should do, should be, should endure. Recognizing when that voice is speaking, and asking "Is this actually true? Is this mine, or is this something I was taught?" is where the inner work begins.
2. Question the inner critic with CBT.
Research on imposter syndrome confirms that cognitive restructuring (identifying and challenging irrational beliefs) is one of the most effective interventions available. The beliefs that sustain imposter syndrome, perfectionism, and self-sacrifice are not truths. They are hypotheses. CBT teaches you to test them.
When the inner critic says, "I should be able to manage all of this without help," the CBT question is: Would I say this to my closest friend? Is this an accurate standard or a punishing one? What is the evidence?
REBT (Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy) goes one step further and challenges the "musts." Not just "I should be able to handle this" but "Why must I? Who decided? What actually happens if I do not?" The must is where the suffering lives. Loosening it is where freedom begins.
3. Let boundaries be a health act, not a selfish one.
A 2022 study in Psychological Health found that individuals who regularly enforced boundaries were significantly less likely to experience burnout. A 2021 study in Clinical Psychology Review found that people who struggled to set boundaries were more likely to report symptoms of anxiety and depression.
Boundaries are not about pushing people away. They are about preserving enough of yourself to remain in relationships without resentment. They are, as the research makes clear, a clinical health intervention.
4. Practice the fierce side of self-compassion.
Kristin Neff's framework identifies three components: self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness. But the key for women, she argues, is developing the fierce expression of each. Not just being gentle with yourself when you fail, but actively protecting yourself from unreasonable demands. Not just recognizing you are not alone in your suffering, but channeling that common humanity into the refusal to accept it as normal.
A meta-analysis of 56 randomized controlled trials found medium effect sizes for self-compassion interventions in reducing depression and stress. The research sample was 77.8% women: this is, effectively, women's research.
5. Seek support and understand why you hesitate.
Research documents that women may be less likely than men to seek treatment after experiencing mental illness symptoms due to self-stigma. For women of color and South Asian women, the barrier is compounded: African-American women are half as likely as white women to ask for help from a mental health professional. South Asian communities express greater stigma toward mental illness than other groups (CAMH).
Understanding why you hesitate (that it is not weakness but conditioning) is the first step toward asking for help anyway. Seeking support is not a departure from strength. In fact, it is a sign of bravery.
The Personal and the Political
The IWD 2026 campaign makes a claim about collective benefit: "When women and girls stand equal, families are stronger, workplaces are fairer, communities thrive, and society becomes safer for everyone."
The same is true at the individual level. When you apply justice to yourself, when you stop holding yourself to impossible standards, when you allow yourself to be helped, when you stop absorbing everyone else's pain at the cost of your own wellbeing, the people around you benefit too. Your children watch you model what it means to value yourself. Your relationships gain the honesty that only comes when someone is not performing at the edge of their capacity.
Research confirms that women with higher self-compassion are more committed to social activism, not less. Inner healing does not pull you away from the work. It actually promotes social commitment.
Balance the Scales is a promise to every woman and girl, regardless of background or identity. But before you can hold others to that promise, you have to extend it to yourself.
You deserve to be safe. You deserve to be respected. You deserve to be free to shape your own life.
Not someday. Not when you have done enough. Not when the kids become independent. Not when the time comes. Not when you have earned it.
Now.
